Frank commentary from an unretired call girl

The Princess de Caraman-Chimay

The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness. – Daniel J. Boorstin

Though the popular conception of the Victorian Era is that it was a time of very repressive sexual morality, one must never lose sight of the fact that this was only among those of the middle class. The upper and lower classes were every bit as randy as they had ever been; roughly 8% of the female population of London were prostitutes, and the 19th century saw the third great flowering of courtesans in Europe (the previous two being Golden-Age Greece and 16th-century Venice). And in the second half of the century the advent of mass communications, rapid transit and the modern financial system made it increasingly possible for strong-willed women like Lola Montez and Mata Hari to capitalize on their sex appeal, attracting wealthy patrons as actresses had since ancient times: on the stage.

Clara Ward was born in Detroit, Michigan on June 17, 1873; her father was Eber Ward, a millionaire who made his fortune in lumber, mining, steel, shipping and rail. He died of apoplexy (brain hemorrhage) when Clara was two, and the bulk of his fortune passed to Clara’s mother Catherine (née Lyon), his second wife. Since she was only 31 (Ward was thirty years her senior) she soon remarried to Alexander Cameron, a Canadian lawyer she met in New York City. The family moved to Toronto, and at 15 Clara was sent to school in London. In the autumn of 1889 her mother took her on a tour of Europe in order to find her a noble husband, and in Nice they met Prince Joseph de Caraman-Chimay of Belgium, whom she married in Paris on May 19, 1890. This sort of arrangement was not unusual at the time; an impoverished European noble married a wealthy (but common) heiress, and she gained a title while he gained a fortune. It was a mutually beneficial match; Clara became only the second American-born princess (the first was George Washington’s great-grandniece Catherine Gray, who had married Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew), and she paid off her husband’s debts (to the tune of $100,000) and repaired his crumbling chateau (a further $300,000).

Clara bore her husband two children, Marie Elizabeth and Joseph Anatole (in 1891 and 1894 respectively), but this quiet, settled period was not to last long; she was beautiful, voluptuous and inconstant and had attracted the attention of King Leopold II. As one might expect, the Queen was unhappy about this and the Princess de Caraman-Chimay soon found herself persona non grata in Belgian society. The Prince therefore moved his family to Paris, where things only got worse; while dining at a fine restaurant, Princess Clara became enamored of the Gypsy violinist, Rigó Jancsi. After only a few secret trysts she ran away with him in December of 1896, and her husband was granted a divorce on January 19, 1897. The paparazzi, who had been intrigued by her since her engagement to the Prince was first announced, followed the couple across the continent to Budapest, where a pastry chef named a rich chocolate dessert after Rigó in order to capitalize on the publicity.

Her mother, on the other hand, was deeply ashamed by the press’ attention to her daughter’s escapade and disinherited her; Rigó (whom she married in 1898) had no money, and the divorce court awarded her abandoned husband the children and alimony of $15,000/year (half of her income from her father’s estate). The Princess (she used the title until she died) had to come up with a way of making large sums of money fast, and like most women throughout history she relied on her sex appeal to do it. Capitalizing on her notoriety, she contracted with the Folies Bergère and Moulin Rouge to pose on stage wearing skin-tight costumes while Rigó played the violin. Though she literally did nothing but stand absolutely still (the general term for such a performance is tableau), the novelty, her fame and her beauty attracted sufficient attention for her to take the act on tour, and she made $6800 ($176,000 in 2012 dollars) in Berlin that April. She modeled for photographers, licensed her image on postcards, and accepted money for “private performances”, which caused frequent and bitter arguments with Rigó; they separated in 1900. Her next husband was Giuseppe “Peppino” Ricciardi, an Italian tourist agent in Paris whom she married in June of 1904 and divorced in 1911. Her last husband was her chauffeur, Abano Caselato, to whom she was still married when she died of pneumonia at her Italian Villa on December 18th, 1916.

Idylle Princière by Toulouse-Lautrec, depicting Clara and Rigó Jancsi

Like so many courtesans, the Princess died very young (only 43), but unlike most the names of her lovers (other than Leopold II and her four penniless husbands) are completely unknown. They must have been quite wealthy, though; despite her enormous expenses, steep alimony and lack of visible income after about 1906, she left a fortune of $1,124,935.96 in cash and about $50,000 in real estate (over $23 million in 2012 dollars). Ironically, her will dated to just after her marriage to Ricciardi and she had never changed it after their divorce, so he inherited a third of her estate (her two children got one-third each). In a way, she was like the Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian of her time: a wealthy sex symbol with no discernible talent who parleyed her highly-publicized sex life into a career as a model and “reality star”.

Fascinating story! I had never heard of the princess before. I had a conversation with a friend of mine about titles of nobility and I remarked that I’d make a great aristocrat. He said, “I thought odalisque was more your style”. I said, “Sugar, do you know how many courtesans became aristocrats and vice versa? We’re (nobles and courtesans) much closer than is thought.”

Oh, definitely! Consider how many of the courtesans I’ve profiled either had actual titles of nobility or were de facto nobles (either via wealth or by being the consort of a ruler). And beyond that, if a noblewoman marrying a total stranger to cement an alliance isn’t prostitution, I’d like to know what is.

With the exception of King Leopold 2 of Belgium, you could describe all of her male lovers as gigolos. A gigolo is a male golddigger. You could also describe him as a male whore. Could you describe Clara Ward as a a johnette(a word coined by me to describe and define a female customer of prostitutes)? It seems Clara Ward was more of a johnette than a whore in my opinion. Yes, she did do what we would describe as sex work for a living. However, it seems to me that she paid for sex and romance more than any man paid for her except for King Leopold 2 of Belgium. and in this regard she is more like the overwhelming majority of men than the overwhelming majority of women in all of human history including the present day. I’m surprised none of you so far thought of any of that which I wrote above.

I forgot to add that the mere fact that she was exceptionally physically
beautiful and probably had a charming personality makes her being a johnette purchaser of gigolos as extremely astonishing. Usually men will pay and do anything to have sexual and romantic relationships with women if they are physically beautiful, have charming and preferably good personalities, have a good character and are young in usually that order. The more beautiful, the more charming and good of a personality, the better of character and younger the adult female, the more men would pay. What I mean to say is that physical beauty, personality, character and youth are the attraction triggers of men in that order be he heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual. I ought to know because I’m a heterosexual man, and other men with different sexual orientations have the same attraction triggers as I and other heterosexual men do..

Another interesting woman. The tableau thing seems a lot like gravure, which is this thing where pretty (and usually busty) girls make videos in which they may shift position or, in extreme cases, even jump up and down, but mostly they sit, stand, or lay around and look pretty.

Today’s action-oriented generation would never put up with just standing still.

I don’t know who Chinweizu was, but the man was a genius. He crystalized much of the debate over male and female relations in a very apt male-centered viewpoint. This is a manual for dealing with women for men. All men should read it.

As much as women may object to its contents, all such objections can likely be boiled down to “But I don’t want men realizing any of this.”

The section from 118-124 is a startlingly clear summary of the feminist movement.

His language is charmingly African-immigrant with its its archaisms and perhaps too-bold statements, without the silly academic fakery of typical neo-feminist prose, but I view this as a charming characteristic rather than a flaw.

Hi Maggie,
I actually have one that is bang on topic and include sex workers and man-hatred. You will know Shelly Lubben. She has apparently come out and said that porn is all the fault of men. If only those big bad men would not watch porn then porn would not exist.

My friend who uses the online name of John Rambo is finding examples of blatant MAN-HATRED among women who refuse to take responsibility for their actions or act like children and he is publishing them to CAF to show the young men just exactly what they can expect from western women. In short, he is denouncing MAN-HATRED where ever he sees it.

So here is an “almost famous” woman who was a sex worker and who was, presumably, paid well for her work, who did it voluntarily, (unless, you know, she was trafficked in to porn or was a victim of some nasty man who was so powerful he made her do is bidding against her will) who is now claiming that, yep, it was all MENS fault.

By the way. John pinged another MAN-HATING woman over the weekend. What did the “strong and empowered and independent grrrrrrlll” do? She ran right for the “authorities” to get his email account shut down. Apparently women can be “world leaders” but they are not strong enough to take the truth in an email. Hhhmmmmm. Hypocrisy what?

The FUNNIEST this is this. She claimed she was being “abused” because he was “stalking” her. Apparently western woman claim that receiving an email is the SAME crime as having a psycho who may very well do you harm follow your every move from close proximity. And, I have read on forums that some men form attachments to prostitutes and do actually stalk them. I do not know how common that is.

But the OUTRAGEOUS claim that an email is the SAME CRIME as a psycho stalker stalking a woman shows me just exactly the nature of western women. No claim of “abuse” is too outrageous to run to the authorities like a 5 year old.

Maggie,
how do ANY women expect to be taken seriously when LOTS of women will claim “abuse” from receiving emails, eh? Men die on battlefields in a hail of machine gun fire, think Normandy. Women claim “abuse” from receiving an email. AND then claim “equality” or claim they “strong and independent”.

It is LAUGHABLE Maggie. And the women who actually ARE a little more able to take care of themselves can assist us by laughing a little harder at these women. Because if a WOMAN make comment against a woman that is ok, almost, but everyone knows that if a MAN makes a comment against a woman he is a woman-hater, has a small penis, can’t get laid, has mommy issues, deserved to get screwed over in court and just maybe god will strike him down with lightning and put us all out of his misery…..and he should be silenced.

Yep…that is the “modern western woman”. Not ALL of them, just 99.9% of them.

A recently published book The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revoltion by Faramerz Dabhoiwala is about the rise of a new set of assumptions about sexual behaviour in the 18th century and, not surprisingly, prostitutes play a large role in this book. The author charts the emergence of new ideas about them, noting the appearance in the 1740s of that most enduring of modern fictional archtypes, the tart with a heart, with high society courtesans becoming national celebrities and managing their own fame in an uncannily modern way.

Interestingly, though, the more tolerant attitutes to prostitution went hand in hand with more determined efforts to “save” women from it, on the new assumption that they were inveigled into it against their better nature. In the 1750s two new institutions opened in London: the “Magdalen Hospital”, which was a reformatory for penitent prostitutes, and the “London Asylum”, where poor girls deemed to be at risk of seduction were sent to be trained as servants. So called Magdalen Houses quickly spread through the English-speaking world and became a major focus for popular philanthropy.

I’m going to add that to my Amazon wishlist; I was familiar with those social trends and have discussed them here before, but I was under the impression they started after industrialization (around the beginning of Victoria’s reign) so it will be extremely interesting to see evidence that the movement’s roots began almost a century earlier. Thank you!

BRAVO! I have read several earlier bios on Princess Clara that report her escapades in horror. I think your view of her as a liberated women, way before that was popular, is right-on. Clara Ward, although she never knew her father, came from very good stock. Eber Brock Ward, more that any other man of his generation, shaped the conversion of the Midwest from a poor agricultural region to the rich industrial “rust belt” of Mid America. Industries that he founded became US Steel, Pittsburgh Plate Glass, and Morton Salt. In addition he was known as “Steamship King of the Great Lakes”; “Iron-master of America” ; “Pathfinder of Industry”; and “Lumber Baron” of Michigan. As a sideline he built the Pere Marquette Railroad, was instrumental in establishing the US Weather Bureau, effected tariffs that made US steel manufacture competitive, helped raise an army for Lincoln in Detroit, Fortified the Detroit River from invasion, developed the richest silver mine in Canada, founded the largest bank in Detroit, owned the Republican newspaper in Detroit where he declared his position as an “equal opportunity employer” – perhaps the first in America! His work as an abolitionist is still under research, but two of his close friends were Senator Chandler from Michigan and Senator Wade from Ohio, two men who were instrumental in promoting emancipation. Senator Wade’s niece was Catherine Lyon, Clara Ward’s mother, which gave her good roots on that side too as well as a liberal social background. EB Ward contributed $10,000 dollars to John Brown’s “Free-Kansas” movement, and was known to buy freedom for escaped slaves in his employ when bounty collectors came to Detroit.

The most amazing part of this story is that Eber Brock Ward virtually disappeared from history around 1900 (25 years after his death). Clarence Burton (Burton Library in Detroit), a professor from AnnArbor, wrote a 5 volume definitive history of Detroit and Wayne County in which he never mentions EB Ward or any of his enterprises. It became the “Bible” of Detroit history, and EB Ward disappeared. It is possible that the escapades of Princess Clara Ward- well reported in Detroit newspapers at the turn of the Century- may have contributed to his disappearance. He also had many jealous admirers and business rivals like his cousin David Ward who wrote his own autobiography, referring to his rich and famous Cousin Eber with every derogatory adjective printable in English. Eber’s divorce from his first wife (to marry Clara’s mother who was 30 years his junior) was on grounds of Eber’s “serial adultery”. This may not have sat well in Detroit Society. There was also an episode where he had James Ludington (sawmill operator and founder of Ludington, MI) jailed in Detroit on grounds of trespass and stealing timber. Ludington had a stroke in jail and Ward gained control of the lumber industry in western Michigan. In his steamship days Ward met competition from a newly formed Association of steamship owners on Lake Erie by building a bigger and better vessel and capturing the bulk of the long- run freight business. The Association offered to buy his boat – he refused but offered to take the vessel off Lake Erie for a payment of $10,000. He got the $10,000, took the vessel out of the Lake Erie trade, and used the money toward building a even bigger steamer which he placed in service on the same Lake Erie route.

Just a few more thoughts. If Princess Clara was not a gold digger, certainly her mother was. Consider Catherine Lyon promoting an affair with Eber Brock Ward, a married man with 8 children 30 years her senior. Was he handsome and dashing or was it because he was the richest man in Michigan by a factor of 2X? The divorce was on grounds of “serial adultry”, and the marriage to Catherine was two months later. I am interested in your sources of the handeling of Clara’s trust fund by her mother. After Eber’s death in 1875, Catherine quickly remarried a distinguished New Yorker (when she was only 31) and they went on to run the Ward lumber empire consistng of 200,000 acres of timberland, four major saw mills in Michigan and Ohio, plus a lumber yard in Chicago. The cash flow from those operations was likely more important to Clara’s European adventure than any direct inheritance from Eber. Was the Prince idea Clara’s or her mothers? Did she even like her not so young or handsome prince?
One last note – I found a nude photo postcard of Clara that was published in Montevedo, showing a “pleasantly plump” Clara. When did our standards of feminine beauty switch from voluptuous to the scarry skinny? Give me an email address and I will forward the photo.
Bart

I can’t imagine the prince being anyone but her mother’s idea; after all, Clara was basically dragged around Europe by Mama until they found a suitable husband, and the affairs appear to have started pretty early. I don’t honestly think out standards of beauty have changed that much; men still prefer women with curves (just look at men’s magazines and fantasy art). The only real difference is that a more petite (i.e. younger-looking) curviness is now more popular than a more robust (i.e. more mature) type, and a flat stomach is more important than it once was. “Scary skinny” is not and never has been popular with men, except for gay fashion designers who want a mobile rack to drape their clothes on without distracting female features. My email address is in the right column there; it’s maggiemcneill@earthlink.net. And thank you!

I love the Olympic Games for a huge number of reasons. Everybody who knows me knows that I’m practically useless for two weeks every two years.

One of the many things that glues me to my TV is the women. Now there are some great bodies, and they often are attached to pretty faces, and on top of all that they are more often than not interesting people.

I like your fashion model analogy to a walking hanger, but how can we get the maninstream media to tell my five female grandchildren that only homosexual men like skinny girls? The flat stomach comment made me reflect on how that “beauty trend” may have come about. For at least a few thousand years, starting with Greek and Roman sculptors through Rubins and Clara Ward, the ‘ideal’ woman had been depicted with a small round belly. I am an artist. I do not paint nudes, but I do understand form and balance as they relate to beauty. The flat stomach look is off balance if you also have rounded breasts. Perhaps it all started with the rise of the porngraphy industry where large breasts became the norm. A flat stomach accentuates the perceived size of the breasts. Large breasts naturally come with a round belly. So in order to meet the pornographer’s desired effect, he had to start with a flat stomach and add enchanced breasts! We also need to encourage mainstream media to announce that less is often more in the breast department. Large breasts are good for comic relief and thick skulled men.

The joke to insert here is:“Some people think having large breasts makes a woman stupid. Actually, it’s quite the opposite: a woman having large breasts makes men stupid.”
– Rita Rudner

As for the flat belly, I suspect it’s related to Rosie the Riveter and the idea that women should be active in things like sports. And then you got guys like Edgar Rice Burroughs writing about those hot cavewomen who scale cliffs and stab villains and run from dinosaurs and such. Then you got Wonder Woman beating up Nazis. A man who does that stuff is going to have a flat belly and let’s face it: a woman who does that stuff is going to have a flat belly too. I refer again to the Olympic Games. Jackie Joyner-Kersey had a pretty flat tummy, as did Dominique Dawes.

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